WRITING GALLERY

Fragments from the Chapters & Notes

If you enjoy reading, you're on a right page. There are several writing projects in progress which are connected to Ethiopia and Haile Sellassie. The novel "DEM" (Blood) (see Famine (fragment)), which I started long ago and don't have time to finish. Mostly, because I began to work on a non-fiction manuscript "H.I.M." (His Emperial Majesty), but this project proved to be even more time consuming.
There are several pages with a lot of writing: Birth of Tafari, 1960: Lost Sons. Also, there are pages with my notes on Ethiopian Art under Painting I, II and eBook.
Thanks to Sailor, who edited many texts on this site.
Visitors, travelers, readers! I welcome your comments and critique:

From Chapter One. 2050: AFTER THE FUTURE

I. INTRODUCTION OF A PROBLEM

Oh, the blessed times, when the great battles of communism and democracy are matters for the textbooks! Finally, we can look behind the politics and look at ourselves. A time when we don't have to defend the obvious and attack the illusionary...
Perhaps I am an incurable modernist and even a futurist. I love the past but prefer the future. The old days offer this homely sense of stable mortality. We all know how childhood feels. The future is merciless. It's time to fight the future.
I'm an agent and an enemy of the future. It's a time without me, but time of my children and their children. The future should be respected no less than the past. But it must be attacked also. In classical history the present was a continuity of the past; now, it's the unfolding of the future. The changes we have gone through in my lifetime are so radical that the consequences of it
have shaped the future forever. What changes?
To see the present I have to go deep into the future, to a time after my death. My daughter, Sasha, would be sixty-seven. Alyosha, my boy, will be older than I am now -- 65, retired. Haile Sellassie will be far away from the time of his reign, to make his re-entry to the history books in his country.
By that time postmodernism will be a thought of the past. The reader of the next century will see many of our problems in an academic light. Politics die fast, often with leaders attached to them, sometimes generations. What is new for us, in 50 years from now will be not noticeable. I took the risk of placing the beginning of this book that far ahead, to avoid arguing with the
past. And the present. The fast pace of history of the super- modern is deceptive. A better view of it could be fully present many centuries from now... but this is something beyond my space of imagination.
The reason for difficulties in addressing the century is its radical nature. I was born into this explosion of the new. I believe that I lived through the break in human evolution. It was a new beginning, which we rightly saw as the end of history. In the future this moment of departure from the classical history will be obvious.
Two countries lost, one gained. Ethiopia lost its best, my wife. Russia lost its son, me. Too much is written about man's dependence on his homeland, nothing about the people's guilt. I wasn't the first to leave Russia, and not the last either. There was no Ethiopian community in the United States prior to the revolution. Now in every major city you could find at least one
Ethiopian restaurant. It was an unthinkable, shocking, whispering story when one of the ladies from the royal family married an Italian and left the country. Who would talk about it now? Through all my sixteen years in America, I questioned this judgement of history. Why would a nation commit suicide? What is the logic in rejecting its own best? I don't have to guess their future -- they are damned -- Russians, Ethiopians, any country with no respect for its children.
One has to trust history no matter how absurd its course might be. Also, I have to stop blaming myself for my choice. It wasn't free choice. Choice! Another linguistic torture! Never mind such a construction as "free choice"! I ran away for "artistic" freedom, as the CIA agent put it in my papers in Rome. Esther ran for her life. Far from free and choice. Who would like to leave home unless the motherland behaves as a cruel mother-in-law? It was the country's choice. The people's will. They are always free, the masses.
My anger is an old feeling. I do not wish evil on them. Not all the time. But I am not sorry for their troubles. Esther had to go through a lot of struggle with herself in 1985 doing fundraising for the famine victims in Ethiopia. The victims are the very people who never cared for her and her loved ones. This
thought never was out of my mind on my return to Russia with my American family. At best the Russians were indifferent to the fate of Americans. They didn't care even to know our problems and worries. Many were as "anti-American" as during the Soviet times when every disaster was good news, proved that Russians were right in being Russians and not Americans. It's not as if
Ethiopians can't help Americans, they have no interest in giving....
I wasn't one of them in Russia. Esther was shocked that
from time to time while in Addis Ababa she was asked if she was
an Ethiopian. How could they mistake her for anything else? She
wasn't theirs. For all the problems a new American encounters in
the USA, they never have this strong smell of non-belonging. It's
YOUR business to make yourself at home, your choice; you are free
to love the country.
It's hard for me to love Russia and now -- to love Ethiopia.
It's difficult to love when you are not loved.
Yes, Haile Sellassie's life appeals to my imagination. I can
identify myself with his fate.
No, it's not the man who lost the country. The country lost itself.

II. THE METHODS OF REASONING

1. EMOTIONAL HISTORY

Marxism calls it "subjective" factors of history. Unable to make history fully deterministic, they had to allow individuals to be a part of the big picture. Accordingly, Lenin was a great leader because he understood the full determination of Russian history and accepted it as his destiny, and therefore became a force of history. If a Greek hero was tragic because he couldn't
read or rejected the will of the gods, the marxists see it as foolishness of the "individual." "Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at most the carcass of time," wrote Karl Marx. The wise goes ahead of his fortune....
This denunciation of the individual will is a reaction to
the French romantics, English rights of One and German idealists.
In the words of Nietzsche -- an ideology of a slave. I know that
I struggle with this marxist formula. Not necessarily with Marx,
who was a bad marxist. Perhaps I struggle with the banal truth of
the facts. He is right if he talks about the common man, but
there was more time essence in Marx than in his time itself. What
is time, Karl? Its powers are big, man's -- great. Am I just a
reaction to the environment I'm in? An expression and reflection
on my times? What are those times without great men? What is
there to talk about? Man is the time. There is no time outside of
man. Opposing Man and Time is merely a redefinition of man's inner conflict.

2. A VIEW FROM THE FUTURE

History? Numbers and dates. Do they make any sense? And how could we even think that we are capable of understanding history as science? It's us. Civilization has to die first before we can reflect on it. Ethiopia died and soon we will be able to reflect on her history.
The problem is that we treat history from our present, not the future. Why do we think about the past as if we are not a part of this past for the ones who will be here after? The secret is to step into the past as if it's your present; that's how you step out of the present. Past and future have a lot in common: they are both outside of the present. We should understand the
post-modern literally -- present after the present. Look at ourselves as if we are the past. To do it is to leave the temporality, to be a true historian.
Is it something which the theory of relativity asks us to
consider when we think about time?
What about 3000 years from now? What in the twentieth
century would matter? It's never "everything" (the way we behave,
recording, taping, collecting). What is important? The history of
Ethiopia in the last century is formed as a STORY of its ruler.
That is how the Greeks began to talk about history. How else
could I relate to the dead, not mine, if not through
identification with another like me?
Why didn't the collective memory preserve the laws,
wars and data of the times of antiquity but a story of love
(Solomon and Sheba)? Will those, after us, be interested in how
the Italian war began? Or what effect it had on HIM? What did it
mean (if anything)? The revolution is a point of history, but pointing to where?
The facts are misleading.
So, what is YOUR method of interpretation of history and
facts? And therefore your selection of events. The dates are the
end of the process. What are the motivations? The event theory
asks for a different philosophy of history. History always was a
man-made product. Even in the past when we weren't in full control.
The postmodern hasn't made it yet to matters of the past.
Virilio's dromology helps. The theory of speed could be useful in
an analysis of national history. The speed of living is different
in every culture, and this speed and sense of speed of living
defines the nationality... How could Ethiopia with its long
military history be seen in the light of the super-modern
militarization of civilian life? Here Virilio meets Foucault --
and the power (discipline) must be viewed as a new (inner)
structure. If the monarchy was open and celebrated as vertical
structure of power, the post-modern (democratic) arrangements
like the darkness of the subconsciousness or the collective conscience.
Ethiopians do not write much anymore. No novels...
So what? How many nations are in the wings of history
waiting to wither away? In my dialogues with myself I have no
answers but questions. What are you fighting? It's not your war.
You wouldn't like to live under such a rule, you would be one of
those revolutionaries who crushed the monarchy. Their misery is
no match for ours. We live like kings. Why does your mind keep
coming back to this subject? Leave it alone, let it go.
Some answers I know. By experience.
I will never sacrifice my individual autonomy. Ever. What
king? What loyalty? Is anything unconditional in my value system?
To analyze we have to notice not only what was said but
also what wasn't. Voices of silence. The gaze of history is described in Michel Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_. Panopticism of culture is the old cultures. Foucault's concept of "Archeology of Knowledge" is very productive in approaching such a historical subject as "emperor" -- it forces the research to
stay within the parameters of "archeological" treatment of the object. "Emperor" becomes a specific cultural concept, which couldn't be viewed outside of that particular culture and time.

3. LOOKING BACK IN ANGER

I study the past as my enemy, expecting that whatever inheritance is coming at me is a Trojan horse. The angry past can't control the future anymore and in its rage attacks and ambushes the messenger of the future -- me. Past, the home, is after its children who left it. The world turned inside out would
hurt you, brother, when you would expect the safety of the home.
Relatives, in pomo, became the agents of punishment. Americans
cut off the past in order to move faster, and -- to be safe.
Is it for losing the past's stature as a father of time? Non-
linear time doesn't recognize the authority of the past.
Modernity in its revolutionary zeal began this trend of radical
negation, and the postmodern did the same to the present. The
real lost its power. What is left? The future, the unknown and non-existing?
Respect? Come on! The old is a liability. What can we learn from the
older generation? What do they know about a world which changes
faster than they can die? Oh, they know it. They try to hide that
they are old. We try to hide them away. The mighty past begs for
protection -- environment and buildings, knowledge and superstitions.
And why does the notion of "respect" even have any place in
working time? When everything is a "material," there is no more
respect than in the operating room. The past refuses to work for
us. What are all our troubles about?
The past in itself is arrogant, it knows no future. The past contradicts the idea of eternity, it insists on "before" and "after" -- oh, the reactionary!
What is this (new) future which is not produced by the past?
Independent from the present, the pomo future is the New, The
Different, The Break. It's not a self-negation of the present,
this future is unrelated and indifferent to the present and past.
The logic of the original creation is non-evolutionary. God is
Anti-Darwin. For a creationist, a revolutionary, Adam is not
determined. Environment is produced for Man, who is not in
existence yet. The six days of creation are actually a reversed
process; having in mind Man, God starts with creation of the
place for this Man. This mode is most explicit in the creation of
souls, who are in virtual existence without any material expression.
Cause and effect in reverse? Apocalypse is the symbol of the reversal: first -- death, next -- resurrection (life). Not existence without death? Whose death, then?
If "past" could be in the situation of "future," the times have
lost the organic connection of the outer (objective) logic. For an immortal their positions are a mere matter of point of view, reading, composition. If indeed the soul is the immortal, its existence before, during and after life isn't time based....
The contradictions: both are right, the pre-modern and post-modern methods. The Ancient: the answers are in the life of the past; the future only reveals them. Future is nothing more than extended past. Nothing comes from nothing, physics claims. The past rules under the name of the future. The future doesn't
exist, only the past which opens itself! If only we could read the past, we would know our future. Prophets -- they always talk about what was done wrong in the past. Future answers.
The Supermodern: we live in the future. Future is more important! Everything for the future! Future will fix all our problems!
In the past they were afraid of the past; totems held the
mysteries of the present. They were slow, we are fast. In one
century we covered the distance which they couldn't in two millennia.
The past was understandable, structured and stable. For each day
of the month a saint was assigned. The Ethiopian calendar,
Inqut'at'ash, had a four-year cycle, with each year named after
one of the Evangelists. You knew who was in charge and where to
send your prayers. There was your own guardian angel and gods of
your ancestors. Many of them -- Christian, Jewish, pagan, living together.
Spirits and demons were everywhere all the time. You knew what to
do and what to avoid. There were wise men who knew it all, and
all what you had to do was to learn from them.
Now I am free from those superstitions. How empty is the
world of modernity! What is there to fear if not for fear itself?
Do you think that the unknown is gone? No, it's there, the way it
was before, the way it always will be. What the liberation from
the magic gave you -- solitude, disconnection, and a fragmented
world. Could I keep electricity without losing imagination? Let
me believe in the telephone and devils at the same time. Can I have it all?

4. THE POLITICS OF HISTORY

Political Science? History never was a hard science and it has very little chance ever to be free from politics. There is a difference between Ethiopian history told by an Ethiopian historian and Ethiopian history presented by an American scholar. Maybe it should be this way.
Nationalism is an integral part of discussing any nation. Too few books are written by Africans to judge their vision of Africa. To this day African history is being written by non-Africans.
Could it be that Ethiopian (African) nationalism is more
forceful than Asian or Central American, because of the
tribalism? There's very little of articulation in it. Hidden --
and therefore, powerful?
History is born out of politics. National histories in the
situation of international politics are confusing. Before
becoming a player in the big game of the Cold War, Ethiopia had
enough internal problems. Enormous external forces applied to a
country make it practically impossible to understand the
"natural" pattern of historical development. What is "natural" in
African history? Did de-colonization really take place?
Contemporary nationalism is a fake one, born out of absence of the "national." Cultures became a subject of politics, very much like our cultural studies wars in the American desert of popular culture. We want to defend something because we don't have it.

Diary & Notes

The story of our visit is a short-story. We had big plans.
We planed to stay for a year, at least, and we left after a few months. The story even has a plot -- our boy got a meningitis after a weekend trip to Nazareth. In Balche, (Russian) Hospital, they called him Alyosha. Ethiopians called him Tafari. For several days he was in crisis. That was the last straw.

Summer, Ethiopian winter -- the Rain Season. No snow? No, winter must be preserved. I feel strange, everything is open, there is no distance between my body and the world. Like in a water. Maybe it's the air, too close to my body's temperature -- the border line disappears.
How can they understand time without ice and snow? What do they think about death? Man has to experience cold to learn chronology.
Huge leaves, banana tree. Now I believe that dinosaurs existed. If as a child I could see it, my life would be different. The cactus and aloe were popular indoor plants in Moscow. My grandmother had them at her window. strange to see them outside, as I am still inside the house. Am I?

Mon. July 3. Children and animals in small groups. Often together. Separate from the adults. There are no toys. They make them themselves, the boys. No fathers. The war was the reason, they say. As in Black America, they are bastards. Without families they will grew up not having nationality. They beg. It's working. They have to work to survive. School days are short, not
enough of everything to hold them full day. And what do they need to learn? To read and write? In what language? To count? Count what? (I never saw a new birr, they must be printing them in Europe).
Half of Ethiopia is under age of 15. Even women and men are separated. Men stare at you, they wait, they do nothing. They were soldiers, they nothing to do now.
(No date). The city is gone, it's a refugee camp -- and therefore a slum. There was not enough housing before the revolution, but Addis Ababa was under a million, not over five.

The military provides the structure in the Third World. Now it's gone, the dictatorship. The crowds. Streets have no sidewalks, and they all are on the road. Most of them are refugees, new to the city. Falasha, the lost and misplaced? Now they all joined the fate of Ethiopian Jews. Gypsies, disorganized nomads, are the model of the future. They leave their villages for
cities. Then the most active of them -- the country. Without war and starvation they still are coming from all over the country, the children of the century of modernization.

The only TV channel runs the same news in three major languages -- new ethnic politics. As if the situation isn't complicated enough. Oromo, they know that they are majority. They come from the countryside to claim Addis Ababa for themselves. The city always accepts the country's mischiefs. They say the
exodus began at the time of the 1985 famine. Like in American cities (?). No, nobody goes back. They have no place to go, they were born in the city slums, and it is their homeland, their global village.
Cars honk constantly, the crowds won't give their roads to traffic. On the sides of the road there is nothing but mud. Maybe roads are bad for car; but, they are good for walking.

So many big signs of embassies everywhere, as if the city has all the diplomats in the world. It's not advertising. There are street names, no mail delivery. I gave up even an idea of driving. On our first day they said -- "You need a good driver" -- I didn't know what they meant. Driver becomes a member
of family. Cook, too. A gatekeeper? Oh, come on! I can open the gates myself! What did I know? Before you know it, you've got yourself a household, a clan. They have to live and eat with you. We wanted to live in Ethiopia -- with chickens, ducks, our own green house. Rabbits? No problems! I have to ask somebody to catch them. We ended up buying from foreigners, the Dutch farmers.

(Four week since arrival, we still live in hotels. After Jourdanis it's the Gion).
At the Gion Cabaret. Old men in semi-military uniforms salute you. Very serious, like Imperial guards. Maybe they are the former guards. A lot of extra service. Labor is dirt cheap. Yashi, our good driver, gets 10-15 birrs a day -- and happy. She worked with a police chief of Addis for 150 birrs a month.
Beggars ask for a birr; to beg is more profitable than any work. All know it. Why should they work? The boys ask for a dollar.

7.23.95. Drums. All night long. Cars' horns. Train from Jibuty? gion Cabarret. Or my high blood pressure. There is no night life, they say. Even the prostitutes on Churchill Ave go home by midnight. You sleep when it gets dark. Addis starts its days early: phone rings before 8 am. It's better to be a tourist in NYC, not in Africa. Christians thought that we're strangers in this world; they didn't say "tourists."

Ethiopia looks like Russia circa 1950, or 1954 after Stalin's death. Well, people are dark. Like in Georgia. They want to live better... so, they will be tourists, too. They won't stroll the streets any longer (which are roads), they will WORK. But so far even matches are from Indonesia. "Kangaroo"! Coffee tray? "Made in China"! The coffee is good. Anis. Ethiopian. 21 birrs. 3 US dollars.

Childhood. Children are asleep. Day is enough time for them to live. They are very much in synk with nature. Birds cry and stop. They are not sure that the night is over. Sleep, paradise. Adam hadn't learned yet that he is mortal. At thirty-three he would loose his sweet dreams...

They woke up Africa. Two decades of civil wars were to follow. Ethiopians could sleep in any position. The guards at Yordanos Hotel stand at the gates almost as if they are statues. It's dark. They sleep.

America is abnormal with its work ethic -- and Japan, I guess. Most of the world doesn't know, and doesn't want to know how to work. They have to be forced to labor: the same as if at the time of slavery. Communist dictatorship was a mechanism, if not an economic necessity.

Bank, post office, any government organization -- go and see for yourself. Government at work -- nothing could be done.

Business ideas. At first -- wow! Open space! You can do anything! Try. Learn for yourself that the absence of services are for a good reason -- others before you already failed.
....
Computers. Customs wars, then trying to make them work -- and selling them. Every step is a problem. Any change is a danger. Of course, you have to know people. Most of them happen to be relatives.

THE END OF TRAVEL

Africa is not a map.

Travel is always travel in time. In the past it was enough to travel in space, because places had their own historical time. Not anymore. Travel is not possible in the age of tourism.

Africans do not travel. They don't have to; the continent travels in time. Twenty years in African recent history equals a century or two. Each new generation faces a new social model and even a new language. The volatile European history of the first half of the century still can't mach the changes the postmodern globalism imposed on Africans. Esther left Ethiopia after witnessing three years of revolution and still on her return after seventeen years, she discovered another country in place where Ethiopia was. Or was it her -- the change? She didn't expect that people would mistake her for a foreigner. She was born in Addis, raised, she thought of herself as Ethiopian.

Foreigners in Their Own Land: I remember my own surprise in a Moscow taxi on my return to Russia after ten years. The cabby thought that I from Riga,
complimenting my Russian. I, too, wanted to scream -- I was a Russian writer! I know about Moscow more than all of you!... What I didn't know -- those ten years when they all traveled from the Soviet Union to Russia, from the red flags and stars to imperial tricolor and the two-headed eagle. I was a foreigner. I couldn't re-enter what was my life. Just a century ago the generations lived in Europe and died Russians. After two decade abroad Lenin came back to Russia to became its leader in a matter of months. Do you think our post-industrial age with a generation of software every six months has an enormous speed? Now imagine a traditional society which transforms with speed of light in front its inhabitants. Maybe it could make you understand the reactionary moods of the newcomers to modernity -- nationalism, tribalism, even communism.

Travel or a trip? A visit. I'm a tourist. I'm not one of them.
What am I doing here? (Are you talking about life, Anatoly?) We
want to be safe foreigners. We leave home to return back. We love
travel because it's a promise of new life. We're born again in
new place. We love the language we don't understand, because we
don't it. The mystery of unusual sounds; we don't know that they
talk about trivial matters. We like to feel different. To be
special. We enjoy the position of ignorance. Because we're
innocent as foreigners, we are not from over here. And we look
down on them. We came, we always can live, we can afford to
travel, to visit -- they don't, they are stuck with the place.

What is it? Search for the Other? Difference? We need it, and we should crave for it more with globalization coming at us. The idea of global village is dangerous: village is a very homogeneous body. It's only a city which could offer you boroughs. Enthusiastic McLuhan meant that in the village all know each other. The danger is that there will be nothing to learn, that all will be the same.

(August)
Africa and travel go together. But what do we mean?
Obviously it's not explorations like in the last two centuries. Are we talking about tourism? Everything is about to be a tourist site: waterfalls and concentration camps, ancient ruins and railroad stations.

Travel to Africa begins before we leave home. The
expectations. Why don't we have them at home about, let's say,
tomorrow? Most of the travel takes place before we get there.
Africa is an idea which breeds expectations. We do not
travel to unknown, the unknown is the grand expectations, too.
The travel is a traveler. Einstein gave us the interesting concept
when an event isn't separable from the viewer. Africa doesn't
exist outside of a non-African observer. Africans are at home,
they dream of going to the West. Experience asks for other and
otherness. At home I can't travel.
Travel is an escape, a change, going away from yourself. We
need it bad. Africa offers a definite Other, as much as nature
could gave. If Africa can't be a travel than what on earth could
be?
I hate tourism but most of the time we stayed in hotels. We
moved into a rented villa (as Ethiopians call a western style
house with all the comforts). I do not like travel -- and my
entire life is travel. Nomadism is the name.
I never arrived in Africa and never will.
What travel do you expect, arriving on Boeing 747? There is
no mass travel.
Which Ethiopia do you want to see?
What is so "African" in Africa? Is Ethiopia an African
country?
Europeans, Americans, Africans, Arabs in hotels. The tale of
two embassies: Russian American company.

The university story. The gates and the guards. It was a palace once. Clean grounds, like in a palace. Empty, students are gone. They have a theatre department, but the stage has no lights. How do I plan to direct here? Every meeting makes the future less and less visible.
....

Africa Today? The Economist (1996, Sept. 7). Africa has 3% of the global investment, Caribbean -- 20%, Asia/Pacific -- 59%! Why not invest? The people. It'll take time before Mexico will join the industrial world -- and the cheap labor could be sought in Africa. Not now, the next generation, perhaps.

The details: mimosa, acacia, peach tree -- write about it. Quiet Africa, the presence of the lost paradise. The leaves, they are out from the world outside of the city, they are foreigners, too. And the birds, the wonder of colors. Hard to believe that it's for a sexual attraction only.
Snow white clothes of women, shammas. Red stripes. Plain and bright. As all of them are brides.
....
Awash river? Sort of. There are no rivers in mountains. They
exist for a couple months.
"New Flower"? A good idea. Maybe sometime in the future. Addis Ababa is the king of villages. The capital of what? It's a provincial city. What is this dust? The garbage in New York is fresh. Dust is a sign of not having money.
....(Notes without dates)
Tabib (evil eye). You have to know how to read dark eyes. You don't see the iris, it's invisible!
Unmistakable alarm cries, war dance, howling.

Tattoos. Why would I wish to tell everybody about my identity? Is it for God? Our punk culture isn't original and very postmodern.

European handshakes, yes. Ethiopians kiss each other. Four time; right cheek, left and again. More of a gesture -- cheek to cheek, not hands. Every day greeting, not the Eastern. They bow. All the time. Abyssinian etiquette -- "your health"! As if all are diplomats.

The Real Powers. The same diet for centuries. Even now when everything else is gone. Food as a habit? Ethiopian restaurants in every big American city. Marxists, democrats, rich and poor, nationalists of all sorts, they are united in taste. The crave for spices.

More of my postmodern anthropology:
Geography ruled long enough. There are a few fat people in Ethiopia, somehow mostly Esther's relatives. Ethiopians are slim. The mountain people like Georgians. It's in their blood and in the air. You live above the level of eagle flight. The atmospheric pressure is less, you feel light. Extraordinary success of Ethiopian runners some explain by the phenomena that highlanders in normal conditions have extra oxygen. I never saw anybody running in Addis, not even rushing.
Camels do not survive at such altitude. The desert culture ends here.

Yes, night is tender. And cold. At night you wouldn't know that you're in a tropical country. Get the blanket. During the day -- umbrellas, you see them everywhere, as if they all going to the beach. The shadow is important. Dogs know this simple truth.

Markato. Haile Sellassie portraits on black velvet.
The success of European monarchies is in the centuries of European experience. They tried it all, socialism and straight fascism, they keep their symbolic monarchies for national identity. Ethiopia hasn't form even a stable form of modern governing, monarchy is a luxury for a third world country. And, to make matters worse, the brains of the nation are not there, not in Ethiopia. Intellectuals left or are leaving, debating the fate of the country between themselves abroad. A professor at Addis Ababa University earns under $200 a month. The best are absorbed by the universities in Europe and USA. The young generation legally and illegally gets to the West. This situation isn't new and has no answer.